I understand where you're coming from,
but the bottom line is, paleontology provides
a means to understand our planet and the
subsequent evolution of the life on it. That's certainly
practical enough for me. Everything else, including
the general public's interest in paleontology is just an
added attraction. All of the other "pure" sciences
taken separately do not explain what paleontology
does. It may not be an applied science in the sense
that medicine or chemistry may be because understanding
that all life on earth shares a common ancestor may
not cure someone's cancer (then again maybe it will someday)
but as humans we are driven to find the truth about things.
7 1/8 cents worth
Jonathan
Original Message -----
From: Toby White <mwhite@houston.rr.com>
To: <mbonnan@hotmail.com>; <"dinosaur@usc.edu"@usc.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2000 9:39 PM
Subject: RE: Paleontology is science, not art
> As this has gotten a little beyond dinosaur science, I've posted a
response
> to Matt Bonnan's well considered note at
> http://home.houston.rr.com/vnotes/temp.html for anyone who's still
> interested. This page is NOT linked in any way to my web page. Its just
a
> convenient place to put it so that it won't clutter up the dino list.
>
> --Toby White
>
> Vertebrate Notes at
> http://home.houston.rr.com/vnotes/index.html
> and http://www.dinodata.net
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthew Bonnan [SMTP:mbonnan@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, April 09, 2000 4:04 PM
> To: dinosaur@usc.edu
> Subject: Paleontology is science, not art
>